Is Clint Eastwood making two IWO JIMA movies? Looks like he is!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I got a press release from TIME MAGAZINE all about a story they're about to run. Clint Eastwood has been hard at work making his WW2 epic Iwo Jima movie FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. That's no secret. But the bombshell that is dropped in this Time article is Eastwood's revelation of shooting a SECOND movie to release simultaneously with FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. This second film will be told from the Japanese perspective, whereas FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS will be from the American perspective.

In my book, that's a really fuckin' cool move. That means next fall we'll have two films by the same creative team about one major historical battle that gives a complete view of the event, with a whole movie devoted to each side's motivations, struggles, defeats and victories. This is a fascinating move and I can't wait to see the end results. Here's the press release and you can visit Time.com at 6pm (I assume PST since it's not updated now, after 6pm CST) for the full story. Enjoy!

CLINT EASTWOOD TO SIMULTANEOUSLY RELEASE TWO MOVIES
ON BATTLE OF IWO JIMA NEXT FALL: ONE FROM AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE, THE OTHER FROM JAPANESE PERSPECTIVE

Eastwood Realized He Had To Find a Way to Tell Both Sides of the Story

‘You Just Have to Trust Your Gut,’ Eastwood tells TIME

New York – Next fall, Clint Eastwood will simultaneously release two movies telling the story of the battle of Iwo Jima – one will be from the American perspective, and the other told from the Japanese perspective, TIME’s Richard Schickel reports in TIME’s What’s Next special issue (on newsstands Monday, Oct. 17).

Beginning next February, Clint Eastwood will start shooting the companion movie to Flags of Our Fathers, tentatively called Lamps Before the Wind. Typically, Eastwood is not able to articulate fully his rationale for this ambitious enterprise: “I don’t know—sometimes you get a feeling about something. You have a premonition that you can get something decent out of it,” he says. “You just have to trust your gut.”

He asked Paul Haggis, who wrote Flags, if he would like to write the Japanese version as well. The writer of Million Dollar Baby and director of Crash, Haggis was overbooked but thought an aspiring young Japanese-American screenwriter, Iris Yamashita, who had helped him research Flags, might be able to do it. She met with Eastwood, and once again his gut spoke; he gave her the job and liked her first draft so much that he bought it. It was she who insisted on giving him a few rewrites she thought her script still needed, TIME reports.

Taken together, the two screenplays show that the battle of Iwo Jima—and by implication, the whole war in the Pacific—was not just a clash of arms but a clash of cultures. The Japanese officer class, imbued with the quasi-religious fervor of their Bushido code, believed that surrender was dishonor, that they were all obliged to die in defense of their small island. That, of course, was not true of the attacking Americans. As Eastwood puts it, “They knew they were going into harm’s way, but you can’t tell an American he’s absolutely fated to die. He will work hard to get the job done, but he’ll also work hard to stay alive.” And to protect his comrades-in-arms. As Haggis’ script puts it, the Americans “may have fought for their country, but they died for their friends, for the man in front, for the man beside ’em.”

Both guys seem to be in this groove where they&#39;ve surrounded themselves with people who will work at the drop of a hat when a story and the bug hits them.
It&#39;s pretty cool to see craftsmen work so effiently.

I&#39;m really excited to see these movies. I always like historical movies and with Clint you can almost certainly count on an A+ movie. The idea about making a Japanese and American side of the story is good. Most movies you can only get a sense of one side. I just hope that he doesn&#39;t half-ass the Japanese side since its not starting untill Febuary. Im sure they both will be excellent though.

FINALLY we get something original out of Hollywood, and it will kick all forms of booty. Quite a cool idea, to get both sides with 2 full movies. How many of us will be watching them both on the same day for the full experience? *raises hand* Good on ya, Mr. Eastwood! Can&#39;t wait.

Pretty good Sam Peckinpah German POV WWII film. Also, I am Jack, that subject line, or sentence, or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, made no sense and gave me a headache trying to decode the bad grammar. Fucking nazi.

even if i am still miffed about his stealing scorsese&#39;s oscar. the aviator is a better film than million dollar baby, sideways should have one best pic, but mdb is still a damn impressive piece of work. when you look at that and mystic river back to back... wow. hard to believe he made two such great flicks in that frame of time. of course, it&#39;s harder to believe that he also made that piece of shite space cowboys or even bloodwork... he can be hit and miss, so we&#39;ll see how this project goes. i will say that unforgiven and a perfect world remain two of my favorite flicks... overall, the man has racked up a damn impressive body of work in the director&#39;s chair.

had a decent, though perhaps shallow representation of the German side along with the allies. There were fanatics and there were ordinary guys caught up in the madness. Who knows at this point what the mix was?---The battle I&#39;d like to see get this treatment is Leyte Gulf. The largest naval battle ever and as decisive as any. It saw obsolete refloated batleships from Pearl Harbor, with inadequate armament going against the cream of the remaining IJN and winning in the last clash of battle lines. It saw tiny escort carriers engage a vastly superior IJN force in a running battle while US destroyers made virtual suicide attacks to cover the retreat. The US carrier aircraft, after expending their ordinance, made repeated unarmed diversionary attacks through Japanese antiaircraft fire. The battle plans were fascinatingly complex, with several potentially fatal mistakes made on each side. One small piece of the battle was probably the inspiration for the surface action in "In Harm&#39;s Way", but it wasn&#39;t done justice. It&#39;s probably just as well it&#39;ll never be filmed. It&#39;d probably come out like "Midway".

You know its amazing, everytime Nazi&#39;s (read Germans 1933-45) get mentioned in TBs, you know things are about to get stormy! Now let me just state for the record here that I&#39;m not an apologist or a revisionist or whatever but I am a keen student of the whole WWII period. And yes, that goes for "the other side of the hill" too e.g The Axis perspective. I think now, 60 years after the end of WWII, its important to explore the motivations and perspectives of ALL the combatants. By doing so we can learn the lessons of the past and hopefully avoid Totalitarianism and genocide in the future. And to the talkbacker who said of WWII "It&#39;s about as black and white as it gets, people." I respectfully disagree; I think WWII was different shades of grey. Some admittedly, considerably darker than others... but no pristine whites either.

He&#39;s entitled to empathise with whomsoever he wants, stop pressuring him into saying, "I didn&#39;t think every Nazi was evil" just so you can jump on him and say, "I knew you were a stupid Himmler loving jerkbag".

Oct. 16, 2005, 9:24 p.m. CST

by Rendell

I&#39;m Scottish, four generations of my family served in the Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, two of whom died for King and Country. I&#39;m on the side of democracy and freedom... and having the courage of my convictions. Not Knee jerk reactions.

Am I the only person that didn&#39;t like Mystic River? An overhyped TV movie with the cast in full-on Oscar-hunting mode. Child abuse. Big deal. SPOILER And the murderer is a minor character nobody gives a shit about. Big Deal. SPOILER ENDS. The obvious Oscar baiting is the reason I stayed away from Million Dollar Baby. It&#39;s the cinematic version of a guy kissing the manager&#39;s ass at work. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Kevin Bacon was the only one who came out of MR with any credibility, for me. But what the fuck was going on with his shitty storyline? That bullshit with his wife not answering the phone was so hokey and thrown in just so he could have a happy ending and a smug smile at the end. Mystic River was completely lightweight storytelling. If it didn&#39;t have Robbins, Penn et al nobody would give two fucks about the movie. It would probably star Dick Van Dyke and end up on TV at 5 in the afternoon. I feel better. It&#39;s just one of those movies that inspires hatred and vomiting in me, not because it&#39;s bad, just because it&#39;s average and dull.

I don&#39;t live my life like that, maybe you do. You sound like you&#39;re in the mind-state of a sixties hippy screaming, "If you aint with us you&#39;re against us!" The fact is, I was/and am on the Swiss&#39; side if any. If the Germans HAD won, I doubt the world would have been denigrated into Robo-supremacy. Humans all adapt, and they would also have adapted to the holocaust of all but the Fatherland, and Motherland nations. I know it&#39;s a sickening thought now, in our own present world, but give it sixty years of sinking-in and you&#39;d have to get used to it. The world is made up of shades of grey, no matter how much you try to break it down. I&#39;m glad we live in our own present culture, but I&#39;m not willing to write-off any others in the process.

any series of circumstances can turn the world on its head. And people would adapt. This is why we&#39;re still here. In no fucking way am I endorsing the holocaust, I&#39;m just saying that you&#39;ve got to look at this thing from the vantage of someone not in this day and age. If you do that you&#39;ll realize people take a lot of shit and pummelling, but as long as there are people still circling this globe they adapt.

Alright, part II. Back to the non-fictional WWII. As an atheist with Christian tendencies, I think that anyone can be redeemed. Just as anyone can be led to commit certain actions if the circumstances lead them that way. To say that all Nazis are completely dead inside, have no good in them at all, is a commonplace thing to read/hear, but still quite a shocking statement. Can you imagine believing in something so much, with such fervour, that you wouldn&#39;t want anything to get in the way? Look at certain Christians and you&#39;ll see just as dunderheaded and brazen an attitude. This isn&#39;t to say that all Red-necked Christians are without any redeeming features. People have more in common with each other than they have differences, at least that&#39;s what I believe. It&#39;s when you forget that fact you want to start killing each other. So, I am on the Swiss&#39; side (the neutral side), who were probably more inclined towards an Allied victory, but didn&#39;t personally want to fight themselves. Call it chicken or whatever you like, but none of my convictions are worth kiling for.

While telling the differing sides of the same battle isn&#39;t brand spanking new (see Tora! Tora! Tora!), having a director film shoot two seperate movies back-to-back in this manner is fascinating. Plus, Clint is on an unholy creative roll as of late, so I&#39;m psyched.

Is Clint Eastwood the shit or what? Good argumant to be made for him being the best "actor/director" ever. Personally i think he probably is, and that only Welles can match him. I&#39;d put him above Chaplin, above Allen and above Howard, (although I have to give props to Clooney as well, who keeps impressing the fuck out of me).

Oct. 16, 2005, 11:21 p.m. CST

by Jack D. Ripper

Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
--John F Kennedy

Having seen a documentary on Iwo Jima recently i believe it will make one hell of a war movie. With "hell" being a literal to describe the tiny island. It would definitely make for a bloodied and moving epic. I also love the idea of a Japanese perspective. A good idea would be to have "crossover scenes" in both movies...where characters in the USA film meet characters in the Japanese film and the scenes are shown in both movies, but with different set ups. Dan that would be good idea.

The movies have similar amounts of effort put into them, and one doesn&#39;t come off as the ugly stepchild. It would be cool if they were very much presented as being apart of the same world; same stylistic features and visual look, and same reoccurring characters where appropriate

... this sounds brilliant. I can&#39;t remember anyone else ever trying something like this. Eastwood&#39;s sensibilities might turn out to be exactly right for the material, and if it pays off, expect this to become a classic double-feature.

Is that whilst most commanding officers were of the less than human stature in the german army, most of them were following orders given by their brass. A severe sense of loyalty and patriotism can lead someone to do something they normally might find reprehensible. For instance, look at the normally humanitarian armies of the civilised world torturing iraqi prisoners etc? Im NOT starting a Bush/Iraq War debate here, and I&#39;ll ignore anyone who does try to respond in that manner. All I&#39;m saying is that soldiers often do just what their commanding officers do.
I also believe Hollywood doesnt have the balls to do a german POV war movie. It&#39;d be majorly controversial, showing americans as &#39;bad guys&#39; on screen, I believe it could be done and done rather well.

He also said that, contained in the innermost fathom of Hell, is Judas in a block of ice. My point being that he said a lot of things... The neutral are free to judge as they see fit because they are the only ones actually seeing events free from filters. Those knee-deep in the dirt have mud in their eyes.

Do some research, we faced off against the japs in some pretty damned brutal naval maneuvers, also, in New Guinea and some other areas. A lot of those stories are far more interesting than the generic american &#39;patriotic boys win over the evil invaders&#39; tales, the Kokoda Trail for instance would make a completely thrilling movie. Read up on it, it&#39;s some amazing stuff.

... is doomed to repeat history. Just because someone is a part of something evil doesn&#39;t make them a wholly terrible person with no excuse for existing. Similarly, fighting on the side of good often involves doing terrible things. It isn&#39;t about being "neutral", it&#39;s about having the sense to see that not everything is simple and that complete immolation alone will not solve all problems in the long term.

amd I&#39;ll go to the dusty building near where I live (I think they like to call it the library) and read up on the Kokoda Trail. but I&#39;m still waiting to get badly flamed just for saying what I believe.

Seeing how this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and could blow your head clean off, you need to ask yourself a question. Do you feel lucky. Well do you, punk? Yes I do feel lucky today. I feel very lucky. Lucky enough for Russian Roulette with that 44 Magnum you&#39;ve got there Mr. Harry. So go ahead make my day tough guy. Blow my head clean off, that is if you only fired five shots and not six. Because if you fired six shots and not five then this really is my lucky day! I can shoot you with this pistol I have in my boot then go on my merry way killing innocent people all over town!

The guy above who recommended "Downfall" as an excellent film about WWII from a German vantage point was right on the money. The Washington Post review -- http://tinyurl.com/dnd3a -- gives a great sense of the tricky line this film walked. While it doesn&#39;t flinch from portraying the absolute evil at the heart of the Nazi regime, it actually manages to show a few Nazi officers as human and conflicted, trying not to succumb to the position they found themselves in. From the review: "Perhaps the most problematic character is an SS doctor, Ernst-Guenter Schenck (played brilliantly by Christian Berkel). When one sees the double-runes, the lightning flashes, of the inner party adorning his black lapel, one&#39;s trigger finger begins to twitch. Yet it turns out that Dr. Schenck is genuinely humane and heroic: He&#39;s all over the place, bringing penicillin to cut-off hospitals, scampering through fire to deliver it, working 21-hour days in a trauma ward where he gets a crash course in wound surgery, arguing against the Nazi martyr complex in favor of mercy for civilians and the wounded. / Equally, the German officers seem exceedingly professional and heroic. They&#39;re all duty guys: no deserters, just hard, practical military men stuck in a dreadful mess and aware that they are doomed and struggling to find an ethical -- by their standards -- way of dealing with it. / And so we ask: Should we admire these people? They are genuinely heroic, caught in a genuinely tragic situation, in the crushing midst of death and chaos. The movie invites you to despise them, but somehow, you can&#39;t. How much easier if the country had been all Joes and Magdas, all Adolfs and Evas, clear mutants from normalcy. But alas, and unforgettably, as &#39;Downfall&#39; makes clear, most of the Nazis were human beings."

Just because you try and explain something that happened doesn&#39;t mean that&#39;s sympathy. A movie about Hitler and his motives, how he came up with his plans and why--the political climate in Germany, etc., would still be a movie about a creepy little fiend who tried to take over the world.

I&#39;d be interested to see the respective grosses of these two movies when they&#39;re released, as I&#39;d be willing to bet that everyone&#39;s going to see the "American" version and skip the "Japanese" version. Shame they couldn&#39;t incorporate both viewpoints into one movie, like in Tora! Tora! Tora!.

Sorry to pick you up on this point Quint. In Das Boot, the U-Boot crew were being attacked by the BRITISH, i.e., the Royal Navy, hence all the reference to the Tommys. I don&#39;t think the Americans were mentioned anywhere in the series. Not all World War II films are about America. The battle of the Atlantic started well before America decided to enter the war.

is it going to be, like, the same story, told from varying perspectives, a la tarantino? are we going to see the same characters in both films, but in different ways? THAT, actually, would make this unspeakably cool... but it could also just be two more or less unrelated stories centered around the same event.

Sepp, if everyone thought like you, the Swiss and the Swedes then we would indeed at this moment be in the process of "mainstreaming" the holocaust. Those of us who would even be here, considering a lot of our parents/grandparents would have been murdered decades ago. Up until this point I had held a fairly high opinion of you, Sepp.

...his legacy has been cemented, he&#39;s had a one-two punch with Mystic River and MDB and every studio is gonna throw money at him regardless. Plus let&#39;s not forget his advancing years; it&#39;s refreshing to see a member of the "old guard" taking big risks like this and if he&#39;s going out, he&#39;s gonna do it on a high and without any regard for any suit whatsoever - that baby, is pure rock and roll.

I understand it&#39;s a naive philosophy, not believing there&#39;s any justification for killing another, but colour me naive. I&#39;ve always, since my childhood, been a person who believes the best stance is one that is taken at a distance. This isn&#39;t to say I condone anything the Axis did. It&#39;s just personally, I would never kill for any cause because "causes" are always wrapped-up in the climate in which they are birthed. This is why I skip politics all together. I don&#39;t think it&#39;s wise to kill simply because the times dictate it as a necessity. This is what I believe in, dislike me for it sure, but that is it. I believe in empathy, and nothing short of achieving it will satisfy me. For reference as to what empathy is (often confused with symapathy) check out this quote by Nietszche: "As soon as you find yourself against me you cease to understand my position and consequently my argument: you must be a victim of the same passion". This means that everything everyone does is entirely justified in its own way. Shoot me for it. Another quote that&#39;ll help you along the way by Philip K Dick, "&#39;It&#39;s true&#39;, he said. &#39;Everything anyone has ever thought&#39;".

It&#39;s just me. Flying solo. I dont get off on everyone out there agreeing with me, that&#39;s the kind of attitude that spurns such individuals as Bush and Hitler. And I made that particular decision years ago. I figured it was the only way I could become an immersive fiction writer, otherwise I&#39;d incorporate my own opinions of iniquities and lower the tone down a notch. Doc, maybe Goat IS write, maybe you are narrow-minded in the extreme deeming this person worthy of YOUR attention and this person not. I mentioned up there that I was a devout atheist, and a true practising atheist who acknowledges that after death everyone else dies with him (for they will never reincarnate into another body), would either blitz-out in life, taking a whole bunch of people with them, or step back and just observe and take-in as much as they can. I opted for the latter. I&#39;m not you so dont feel the need to give a shit. One errant person out there doesnt bring the whole pack down. And if it does, then the pack is as guilty as anyone else. It is those led astray who should be held responsible for their actions, not the leaders. The leaders are always going to be expedient.

Come back in twenty years, and tell me that everything is true. That&#39;s the sort of mealy-mouthed bullshit that sophomores in college feel really smart saying. However, as much as I like PKD&#39;s work, he was a loon. There _IS_ an objective reality. As you proceed, trying to live a productive, peaceful, quality life, you will almost certainly learn that is true. Unless you&#39;re a loon.
Avoiding killing is admirable, and I&#39;m not advocating blindly following political leaders into conflict. But blanket statements against violence, especially justified with utter nonsense, is unwise in the extreme.

I meant that the nazis were not robots. A human with a depraved and sick and murderous and cunning and conquering bent is still a human. If the Nazis had won the war, and in fact killed everyone but the Germans, you&#39;d still have humans on the world. And as such they were not robotic. Purty simple. You don&#39;t agree, which I accept. You harangue me to try and get me to become you. Not gonna happen. If you have kids, you&#39;ll know that the harder you try to convert someone the further away from you they get. I&#39;m saying that I wouldn&#39;t be the same person if I&#39;d lived in a Nazi-run world for 60 years, and as such I wouldn&#39;t have any film-obsession, nor would I be imprisoned because my opinions would have been cultivated differently. A different world, a different person.

seppukudkurosawa ... that&#39;s not necessarily true. Its true that every person is the product of their environment but everyone has their own beliefs and innate knowledge of what they know is right and wrong. If what you said was true there would be no revelution ... no disagreement. Everyone would be whoever they were told they had to be. That is the sheep mentality which unfortunately most humans have become. Its too wasy to sit back and let others make the decisions .. let others fight the battles .. and then pick up the pieces when its over. We need more leaders in this world who WILL take a side and not defer to the sidelines. Americans have become harangued for pushing our point of view on everyone else ... but I would rather be someone who acts and makes mistakes then one who does nothing. I forget who said it but I love the quote that said "The easiest way for evil to persist is for good men to do nothing"

because you&#39;re right, if everyone stood back they&#39;d all be kicked into line by one lucky assertive son of a bitch. Like I keep trying to say, I don&#39;t relate what I do to what everyone does.

Thats even worse. If you have an opinion than stand by it and try to convert the masses - otherwise its just lip-service. You dont want anyone to join you but you do concede that if everyone did then we would be the worse off for it? Sounds like you dont agree with yourself. You dont truly beleive in it yourself but you want others to defend it for you? If everyone though like you we would be speaking German and having weekly book burnings, and you cant play it off by saying "Well thats just me" ... if your not helping then you are hurting by giving strength to the detractors.

I used to post here a few years ago under a different name, but I decided to take a vow of silence, and check in at aintitcool a bit less because I was mourning my child (she died at five years old of leukemia). She was the only thing that broke me out of my shell and she left me, so I figured this talkbacking thing was pointless when life bites you like that. And I was right. I dont know why I came back. Fuck it there&#39;s no reason to tell any of this shit to you, but you don&#39;t know who I am so it doesn&#39;t matter anyway. My baby was the only thing I loved. The only thing in the world that truly existed. I can remember her heart beating, I can remember her cryptic little phrases, I can remember her hand in mine, I can remember telling her not to trust me or her mother or anyone, but that her way is the only way of life. I can remember her dead body on display like that. Why the fuck man. She wasn&#39;t even there anymore, what was the point. It&#39;s like they&#39;re trying to force you to stare at the china doll that always frightened you. I&#39;m out of here for good.

I don&#39;t mean to ride the high horse here ... I mean if something like this happened in this day and age I can&#39;t honestly say how I would react. I would hope I would join the cause to help out but in the same token I do fear for my life and the lives of my loved ones. I also do not beleive in the UNJUSTIFIED killing of another - and yes I know justified is VERY subjective, but isnt this what we were fighting for? We had to fight and kill so that others and our children could LIVE free and without fear of the death and persecution that the Nazis instilled in the Jews and other groups. Sometimes who have to choose the lesser of two evils - killing for defense to prevent murder.

It&#39;s Eastwood so I&#39;m sure it&#39;ll be very well made, very slow paced and get a collective handjob from the academy, but I can&#39;t really get excited about another war movie. "War Is Hell." I can only sit through 3 hours of that so many times. But 6 hours? Maybe I&#39;m just in a sulk or something tonight but I feel like I can live without another "moving/unmissable/*****-The Daily Mail" film with a swooping score, lots of staring and just enough blood not to endanger that inevitable oscar. Just a bit bored by the whole thing.

Thanks for setting me straight....that completely changes the meaning of what I said. The first guy got the MEANING of the quote wrong, I got the wording wrong. We&#39;re lucky people like you are editing the talkback.

the third one is told from the persepctive of a bunch of radical surfer dudes who fell through a time portal and landed in Iwo Jima. it is here that they find some gnarly waves, and some even gnarlier war time atrocities! ____ the fourth Iwo Jima film is an "alternate future" version in which the US and Japan fight each other with robot battlesuits, teenage girls with super powers, and roided out body builders in brightly colored skin tight lycra bodysuits. towards the end of the film, gamilon wages war an earth and showers the planet with planet bombs forcing the humans to move underground and listen to etheral disco from beyond the stars... luckily, they get a message from Queen Starsha of Iscandar who has the Cosmo DNA which can save planet earth! and, so, a team of heroes is assembled from around the globe.. they are called the STAR FORCE and they are humanitys last hope. can they make it all the way to Iscandar and back in just one earth year? hurry Star Force! Hurry!